VIDEO: Bitcoin explained

But why are people choosing to use Bitcoins now is unpacked by a communications expert, Paul Kemp-Robertson, during his Ted Talk.

People are actually trusting businesspeople more than they're trusting governments and leaders. So what's starting to happen, if you think about money, if you sort of boil money down to an essence, it is literally just an expression of value, an agreed value. So what's happening now, in the digital age, is that we can quantify value in lots of different ways and do it more easily, and sometimes the way that we quantify those values, it makes it much easier to create new forms and valid forms of currency. In that context, you can see that networks like Bitcoin suddenly start to make a bit more sense.

Michael McCrae is executive editor of MINING.com. Before coming to InfoMine, Michael worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers throughout British Columbia. He also worked in pre-sales for various software firms and banks. (DISCLAIMER: The author may hold securities in the articles mentioned. Nothing written should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Seek the advice of a broker-dealer first.)